Love Those Monkees!
Ever since I can remember, I've known that monkeys are the source of all things good. As a child I believed I could worship those amazing creatures better if I were in their own habitat. So, each day when the three o-clock school bell rang, I'd run to my cubby, put on my outside shoes and race out the door. On the way home I always took the short cut through Peabody Park. Peabody Park was a very big park and most people stuck to the main pathway around Peabody Pond, which left the remainder of the park pretty much to me. At the west end the trees grew the most dense, not to mention larger than any trees found anywhere else in the 100 mile radius around Pickletown. This is where I went to pray. I had a favorite tree. It wasn't the tallest or the widest tree there, but I think that was part of its charm. It had some of the roughest bark I have ever seen--this made it all the better to climb. But I didn't have to climb for long because only twelve feet up the big beautiful branches began. Once I got to these branches I could climb every bit as well as a monkey, I'm sure of it! I would climb higher and higher until I thought the tree would break under my weight, each time going one branch higher. When I got to that point I'd wrap my arms and legs around the tree, crossing them on the far side of the trunk, and just sit there. I'd think about how wonderful life would be if only I never had to come down. My thoughts would wander to days spent frolicking with my monkey friends... Oh, how wonderful life would be if only those dreams were to come true. But alas, this was an unlikely scenerio, for there were no monkeys in or around Pickletown. I couldn't even see them in the zoo, because the zoo was all the way in Pickford and my parents never drove to Pickford. Besides, the zoo is no place to keep something as good as monkeys. Monkeys should be free to swing in the jungle and eat bananas. It probably would have only made me sad to see them locked up in cages. So, all I could do was sit. Sit atop my favorite tree, and pray... 